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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761072">Wildfire</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainstormdragon/pseuds/rainstormdragon'>rainstormdragon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>ATLA Smut [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst and Porn, Apologies, As She Deserves, Blow Jobs, Body Worship, Cockblocking lemurs: the bane of the Air Nation, Cunnilingus, Deepthroating, Denial of Feelings, Discussion of Healthy Relationships, Drunken Shenanigans, Edging, Everyone Needs Therapy, F/M, Facials, Guilt, Hypothetical Questions, Ice Play, Mai is living her best life, Masturbation, Masturbation Interruptus, Not quite infidelity, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay, Overstimulation, Past Aang/Katara (Avatar), Past Mai/Zuko (Avatar), Porn with Feelings, Possessive Sex, Post-Canon, Power Play, Practicing Calligraphy, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rough Sex, Sexual Tension, Shovel Talk, Smut, Soul-Searching, Squirting, Teasing, Waterbending &amp; Waterbenders, Zutara, argument, deepthroating but in a romantic way, name kink, waterbending sex, waterbending used for recreational purposes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:32:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>14,079</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26761072</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainstormdragon/pseuds/rainstormdragon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>'Stop thinking about him,' was the wrong answer to give her, Zuko knew. So was 'I never want to stop touching you' and 'we could keep doing it, he doesn’t have to find out.' Aang was one of his best friends. He trusted Zuko to act honorably. And Zuko had just had passionate, drunk sex with the woman Aang loved.<br/>Katara was right. They were horrible people.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Katara/Zuko (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>ATLA Smut [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1865596</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>318</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Selfish</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to the NSFW Zutara forum who gave me the prompt and plenty of encouragement and ideas when I stalled writing it. Special thanks go to randomgirlyoudontknow and Yume.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
  <span>It was when a Fire Nation diplomat introduced her as the Avatar’s wife that Katara snapped. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“My</span>
  <em>
    <span> name</span>
  </em>
  <span> is Katara. I am the last living waterbending master of the Southern Water Tribe.” She shrugged off Aang’s calming hand on her shoulder, glaring at the official, who now looked like he wanted to flee. “You could at least do me the courtesy of introducing me by my name. Aang and I aren’t even married!”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She had stormed out of the room, ignoring his stammered apologies after her, knowing she was overreacting, and not caring one bit. It had been like this lately. And the worst thing about it was that, in a way, some of it was her own fault. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>You are a woman of the tribe,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she could almost hear Gran-Gran telling her</span>
  <em>
    <span>. You are the heart and soul of the family. They rely on you to put aside selfishness and do what is right.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
  <span>And she had. For years, she had. Her one act of selfishness had been declaring herself banished to go with Aang and learn waterbending. But their little group had become its own kind of family, and once again, Katara had become its heart and its conscience, caring for them like the mother she had been to her own family since her own mother had been lost. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>It had been too easy to fall into that role. It was what she did. Sometimes, she wondered if it was all she knew how to do anymore. Even in her defiance of all the traditions she had grown up with -- leaving her people, traveling the world, loving a man who did not hunt, fish, or belong to her own people -- deep down, she was still following the same old patterns. Being the caretaker, the motivator, the nurturer, the conscience of those around her. No wonder they thought she was Aang’s wife. She </span>
  <em>
    <span>acted</span>
  </em>
  <span> like she was. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>And Aang both was and was not the problem. He had never pushed her into this role. He, as much as anyone, knew that she was not so much a healer as a warrior. Ever since she had taught him to heal, not long after the war, Aang had been defying the expectations of more traditional waterbenders by healing people himself instead of passing the task to Katara. He liked healing. It suited his nature far better than combat.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Yet, traveling with him and working beside him to create balance meant stepping aside again and again as he took the lead, as people sought out and asked for help from </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span>, because he was the Avatar. It meant that she ended up in a wifely role, arranging where they would stay and what they would eat and being at his side to help and consult. For all practical purposes, she was his wife, but without the most important thing she’d always assumed she would have as an adult woman -- her own home that she ruled and could shape to her liking. Aang was happiest on the move, but Katara felt the impermanence and powerlessness of it keenly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>They had fallen into a routine, their relationship shunted aside to spare moments as they tried to keep the world in balance and repair centuries-old wounds. Katara wanted to be with him, wanted to be making a difference in the world, but it felt like she spent most days as something like a personal assistant. And she’d done this to herself. She was not doing a single thing for him that she had not taken on of her own accord because she was there and it needed to be done. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>I don’t want to leave him, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she reflected, shooing away an innocent badgerfrog who was investigating her boot. </span>
  <em>
    <span>But I can’t keep being the person I am when I’m with him.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>I have to get away.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>*</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>It was several days before she had a chance to speak to Aang about this. When she did, he seemed to understand even better than she understood herself.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“We have a word for it,” Aang told her, taking her hands in his and telling her the word in the old language of his people that she could never manage to pronounce right. “When an airbender feels trapped and confused, they go off on their own -- you’ve seen me do it -- and meditate on which way the air currents inside them are blowing. Feeling like this isn’t wrong. It means you’ve been going against a part of yourself. You need a time of freedom to find and follow that part of yourself so you don’t lose it again. It’s not just an airbender thing, either. Iroh did it after Lu Ten died. And when Toph traveled with us, that was hers. You need to do this to honor the needs of your spirit.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Why do you always have to be so generous?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Katara wondered. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Why can’t you be selfish and tell me that you’ll miss me, that you need me, that I’m yours? </span>
  </em>
  <span>But she was not his. Airbenders … didn’t believe in love that way. There was no possession, no restriction on each other’s freedom or actions. It was so unlike the idea of love that she had grown up with -- </span>
  <em>
    <span>you belong to me, we both belong to the tribe, and our duties and the will of the Spirits guide us in a powerful tide that we travel together through our lives -- </span>
  </em>
  <span>that she still felt that dissonance in her mind sometimes. What was wrong with her?, Even as she needed time apart, a piece of her wanted him to hold her back so that she could fight her way free, instead of gracefully accepting it and letting her go.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>What a twisted-up mess she was. How could he love her so effortlessly when she was such a disaster inside?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>*</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko did not realize that Katara had not left for the Earth Kingdom with Aang until he came across her in the gardens, weaving with water in the lantern light.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>It was something he’d never seen before. She was controlling at least a dozen streams of water, and holding them separate as she braided and knotted them around each other. It had to be a concentration exercise, he realized, keeping them from flowing together and twisting them in such intricate patterns, and somehow making it almost look easy. He had known she was a waterbending master for years, of course, but watching her, he found himself marveling anew. The light of the hanging paper lanterns was reflected in the water she wove, and it glowed with their prismatic hues like dragonfire. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Why was she here, though? He hadn’t been there to see them off when Aang had left earlier. All day, he’d been stuck in back-to-back meetings with representatives from the former colonies. Wouldn’t someone have told him if she’d been sick or unable to travel for some reason? She didn’t look sick.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    He should probably ask her instead of lurking in the shadows, watching her like a stalker. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Katara?” he ventured. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    She gasped and spun around, the water she was working with crackling softly as it froze in midair. She relaxed as he stepped out of the shadows. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Zuko!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Sorry,” he apologized. “I was just here and you were here, so…” Words were not and had never been his friends. He shrugged. “Hi.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Hi.” She smiled, and the water hovering behind her turned liquid once more.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “It’s pretty,” he said, gesturing at the shimmering fabric of it hanging over the pond. “Is it a type of meditation?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Katara nodded and let the water flow back to join the rest of the pond with a graceful motion. “When we went to the North Pole the second time, one of the waterbenders there taught me. It’s not a kata, exactly, but it’s a more advanced exercise. How many strands you can do it with is one of the ways they measure your abilities as a waterbender.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “So you practiced until you could do it with as many as the masters there,” Zuko concluded, his raised eyebrow challenging her to deny it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Of course. We can’t have our sister tribe outdoing us,” Katara agreed, drawing herself up slightly at the thought. “They already have some misguided ideas about the South, but I can at least prove our waterbending is as good as theirs.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “I don’t think anyone who’s met you would dare claim otherwise.” He offered her his arm and she took it after hesitating a moment. They walked in the gardens for a few moments in comfortable silence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    The two of them, Zuko thought, were really the only members of the gang who were any good at silence. The others would have broken that silence with rambling monologues or snarky comments or something. He and Katara just walked, and he felt some of the tension slowly leave the arm wrapped around his. He wanted to ask why she had stayed behind, but he wasn’t sure if he was already supposed to know. Maybe someone had left a note on his desk and he’d overlooked it, or said something to him while he wasn’t listening. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Want to get a fruit tart?” he asked instead, because he knew how much Katara liked the Fire Nation delicacy. Sure enough, her face brightened. Uncle was right. When in doubt, offer a woman food. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Do they have the berry ones?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“If the kitchens don’t, we can send someone to go buy us one,” Zuko said. Katara shook her head.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I will never get used to the idea that I can just decide on a whim that I want to eat some particular thing and there will be someone who has it already made and ready to sell to me, even at this time of night. Cities are so </span>
  <em>
    <span>weird,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> she declared. But she did not argue as he led her back to the palace and got a servant to pick up a berry tart and sizzle-crisps from a nearby restaurant. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>    Half an hour later, most of the food and a bottle of wine had been consumed, and Katara was pacing around Zuko’s private parlor barefoot. Zuko was lying on some cushions, uncorking a second bottle with his knife. (His servants were always after him to stop doing that as if he was still living on a navy ship and use a corkscrew, but they weren’t here to catch him, were they?) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “It’s so </span>
  <em>
    <span>stupid,”</span>
  </em>
  <span> Katara was saying, waving her glass alarmingly. “It’s not that I’m not happy with him, it’s just that I’m with him, but I’m not </span>
  <em>
    <span>happy, </span>
  </em>
  <span>you know what I mean?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Zuko did not know what she meant, but made a sort of encouraging sound, hoping this was the right answer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “It’s me that’s the problem! Me and my issues and the way I keep putting myself second to him because that’s all I ever learned to do! Even when I’m not living back home, it’s like I bring the tribe along with me in my head. I just start organizing things for him like his dutiful wife-- damn it!” Katara threw herself down on the cushions beside him. “See? It’s inside my own head. I can’t get away from it. I’m not </span>
  <em>
    <span>being dutiful</span>
  </em>
  <span>, I’m ignoring what I need and fussing over him as if he’s not a grown man who can see to his own meals and arrangements.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “I’ve seen Aang eat a pickle sandwich, go to sleep on Appa, and wake up refreshed,” Zuko contributed. “He doesn’t need a lot of fussing.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Katara rolled her eyes as if Zuko was missing the point. “It’s a pattern I can’t get out of, that’s the problem. We’ve been together for years, and I didn’t realize what I was doing until it was too late to change. And it’s not his fault. He’s a really, really good person.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “You look pretty miserable about how good a person he is,” Zuko observed, pouring them some more wine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Katara scowled. “Well, sometimes it’s hard to be with a good person. It means you have to be a good person too, </span>
  <em>
    <span>all the time</span>
  </em>
  <span>, to live up to what they expect of you. And I’m not always a good person.” She sipped her wine, stretching out her legs and distracting Zuko as her skirt rode up to reveal the muscled curves of her calves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    He was not always a good person either. He dragged his eyes away, but they wandered right back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Where’s Mai these days?” she asked idly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “On paper and as far as her parents know, she’s a cultural ambassador to the former colonies,” Zuko said. “Unofficially? She’s working with June as a bounty hunter, rounding up the gangs who have been taking advantage of the disorder. She gets to drink in bars and beat up men twice her size. She’s having the time of her life.” He smiled slightly, thinking of her letters.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Do you miss her?” Katara asked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Of course.” Zuko looked away, avoiding meeting those too-perceptive eyes. “I wasn’t right for her, and she wouldn’t have been happy being the Fire Lady. Court bored her. But it was really hard, letting her go.” It had been, even though he’d known by then that she wasn’t the one he really wanted.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “See? That’s a normal answer. You’re still a good person, you’re just not … ugh. Do you know what Aang said?” she demanded.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “What?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “He said he’d rather know I was out there finding myself and my freedom than with him feeling trapped. Isn’t that the most supportive and selfless thing to say? I should </span>
  <em>
    <span>want</span>
  </em>
  <span> him to say things like that. It should make me happy. But… I want him to need me. And he doesn’t need me, Zuko.” She rested her head against his shoulder and his breath caught for a moment.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    His friends from other nations were so much more casual with physical affection than he had been raised to be. But he had learned. Gently, he put an arm around her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Of course Aang needs you. He just knows that if he asked you to stay, you would.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    I don’t want to stay. I want him in my life, of course. I love him. But who I am with him isn’t who I want to be, and I just … I don’t see that changing. He’s always going to be the Avatar. And I’m always going to be in his shadow. And it feels so terribly selfish to complain about being overshadowed by the bridge between our world and the Spirits because, duh, everyone is.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Zuko nodded and drank more wine instead of talking. Even if he didn’t completely understand the years worth of baggage under the surface of her and Aang’s relationship, he was sure they’d get back together in the end. She just needed a sympathetic listener right now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Katara confessed. “I don’t want to think about it. You need to make me shut up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    He took a deep breath, because he could think of so many ways to make her stop talking and none of them were even slightly appropriate. Zuko swallowed hard. “Um. Pai sho?” he suggested.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>    … Pai sho, played while drunk, was not his best idea. They were both way too competitive and there were way too many pieces to keep track of and rules to argue over.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “I won, see, I’d just set up my third harmony before you knocked the board over,” she whined as Zuko found the last few pieces under the table and put them back in the lacquered wood box. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “We were playing to five, not three! And you lost a bunch of your pieces to me before that, you do not win.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Only because you were cheating! Toph taught me you can’t move the lily in that direction and you did it anyway,” Katara insisted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Because that wasn’t the lily, it was the white jade.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Yeah, well, we weren’t playing to five, we were playing to three, so I won.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “You don’t win. I’m the Fire Lord. I win.” Not his most mature argument, but he didn’t care. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Zuko? What’s being the Fire Lord like? I mean, what’s it really like?” Katara asked, leaning in and distracting him with how blue her eyes were.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Not much fun,” Zuko answered honestly. “Too many meetings. Not enough money to do the things people need. Lots of stubborn old people. The food’s not bad.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    She made a sympathetic face.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “What’s it like bringing balance to the world with the Avatar?” he asked. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Too many meetings. Not enough power to do the things people need. Vegetarian meals. Lemurs and sky bison interrupting when you’re trying to get laid,” Katara confessed. Zuko snorted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “So now we get to the real problem in your rel… alationsip,” he said, struggling slightly with the word but persevering. “Cockblocking lemurs.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “The bane of the Air Nation,” Katara confirmed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Zuko’s eyes were drawn to the swell of her breasts beneath the blue fabric of her top. “Can’t believe anyone would let a lemur stop them from having you,” he said, then bit his tongue, realizing he’d said it aloud.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “I know, right?” Katara agreed drunkenly. “I’m very enthusiastic.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Zuko groaned and buried his face in a pillow for a moment, trying not to imagine just how enthusiastic she could be. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “You can’t just say things like that,” he accused her, slightly muffled. “I’m trying to be a good person here.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Wait, are you… “ Katara burst into giggles. “Did you seriously get hard just from me mentioning sex?”</span>
</p><p><span>    He removed the pillow from his face to glare at her despite how darkly he was blushing. “You’re not supposed to</span> <span>comment on that.” And she was still looking, too! He pulled his robes to cover the crotch of his pants indignantly. “Or </span><em><span>stare</span></em><span> at it!”</span></p><p>
  <span>    “Poor Zuko, are you that lonely?” she asked, still unable to keep a straight face, which he felt was very unfair of her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “I’m not the one who just told a man how </span>
  <em>
    <span>enthusiastic</span>
  </em>
  <span> she was,” he said, his voice rough in his throat. “You sure you want to go there?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    She leaned in defiantly, and his heart stuttered as a couple strands of her hair brushed over his neck and her thigh pressed against his. “Oh, please. You think I’m afraid of you? You couldn’t handle me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Zuko raised an eyebrow and reached up to tuck the offending strands of hair behind her ears, then let his fingers trail down her neck and over her throat. He felt her pulse quicken. “Don’t play with me, Katara,” he said softly. “You think I couldn’t handle you? Do you really want to find out?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    There was a long pause as the challenge thickened the air between them. “I’m not always a good person,” she murmured, echoing her words from earlier. Then she closed the distance between them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Her mouth was hot and sweet and she kissed him like a wild thing. He curled his hand tightly around the back of her neck, anchoring her, giving as good as he got. His heart pounded in his chest as he pressed her down into the cushions, his body shifting to cover hers. One of her hands slid to the neck of his robe, pulling it open to touch battle-scarred, sweat-damp skin, shoving the robe off his shoulders to dig her fingernails into the muscles of his back. He shivered and gasped into her mouth. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Did she have any idea how weak he was for her? Her kisses and her touch washed through him like the tide and he was drawn to her, greedy for every taste, every breath, every sound. Enthusiastic wasn’t the word. Katara was … incredibly, gorgeously uninhibited. When he groaned and arched against her, she wrapped her legs around him. He pressed his mouth to her neck and used his teeth, gently at first, then harder until she was whimpering and rocking against him. Zuko pushed the fabric of her skirt up her thighs, filling his hands with the curves of her backside and tilting her hips to grind against her at a more intense angle. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Katara.” His voice caught and rasped in his throat, and she caught his mouth again in a hungry, biting kiss that robbed him of words and breath for several long moments. “Katara, oh Agni, I need you. Let me inside you. Let me --” Words deserted him again and he just kissed her deep and rough and filthy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    She reached down and fumbled with her sarashi, tugging the wraps loose and pulling them aside. Zuko made equally quick work of his own garments and then -- oh, Spirits, his cock was pressing against her entrance and she was so soft and slippery-wet that he had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from whimpering. Frantically, his eyes met hers, and his own desperate need was echoed there.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Yes,” Katara breathed. She tightened her legs around him and pulled him in. He distantly heard himself cry out as she took him. Intimate muscles flexed and yielded to his cock as in one hard thrust, he sheathed himself in her. Their bodies fit together perfectly. Her head was thrown back, blissful, and Zuko did not hesitate. He moved, taking her with feverish intensity. She met each hard, deep thrust with a liquid undulation of her hips, fingers digging into his back and shoulders, nails scraping his skin. The pleasure was intense, visceral, overwhelming, and he chased it, needing more and more and more of her. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara came gasping his name, and that was it for him. He spent himself inside her so hard his vision whited out around the edges. He held her close as he shuddered in the aftermath, his face buried in her hair, not wanting to let it be over. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Oh, Spirits,” she whispered, sounding blissful. Then, again, in shocked realization: “Oh, Spirits. Zuko, what did we just do?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Uh.” He swallowed, skimmed his fingers very lightly down the soft, warm curve of her waist. Of all the unwise decisions he’d ever made, he was pretty sure he regretted this one the least. He avoided her eyes, not wanting to face her guilt or disappointment in him. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara shifted beneath him and he reluctantly pulled out of her, a little shiver running up his spine. He moved to allow her to sit up, and watched wistfully as she frantically tugged at her disarrayed clothing and wraps before giving up and putting her head in her hands. Zuko reached for his discarded robe and wrapped it around her shoulders. She sagged against him. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“What can I do?” he asked softly.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I’m a horrible person,” she told him quietly. “What’s wrong with me? How could I do that to him?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Stop thinking about him,</span>
  </em>
  <span> was the wrong answer to give her, Zuko knew. So was </span>
  <em>
    <span>I never want to stop touching you</span>
  </em>
  <span> and </span>
  <em>
    <span>we could keep doing it, he doesn’t have to find out. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Aang was one of his best friends. He trusted Zuko to act honorably. And Zuko had just had passionate, drunk sex with the woman Aang loved. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Katara was right. They </span>
  <em>
    <span>were</span>
  </em>
  <span> horrible people. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Sunlit</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>They should probably stop doing this.<br/>They don't.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
  <span>“Uncle?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Iroh looked up from his tea at his nephew, who was fidgeting with the sleeves of his robe.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Yes?” he asked gently. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I have an, um, hypothetical question.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Oh, dear. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Go ahead.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Say that someone … had a very rare and beloved sort of tea, and their friend gave into temptation and drank a cup of it while they weren’t around. And they didn’t want to lose that friend’s trust, but they also really wanted to do it again.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“If I find out that you have been into my tea without permission, I will be very displeased,” Iroh said, raising an eyebrow. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“No! I haven’t touched your tea. This is hypothetical.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Then </span>
  <em>
    <span>hypothetically, </span>
  </em>
  <span>I would say that the friend should confess and replace what he drank, and apologize.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“And … he shouldn’t have any more of the tea, right?” Zuko looked inexplicably gloomy at this prospect for a young man without the proper appreciation for tea.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Surely this friend can buy his own tea, can he not?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Not </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> tea.” Zuko fidgeted some more. “And it’s … really, really good. He’s never had anything like it and he can’t stop thinking about it.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Hmm. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Iroh considered this for a moment. “This tea wouldn’t be a young woman, by chance, would it?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko gave a guilty start. “It’s tea. Hypothetical tea,” he said defensively.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>And considering how few people Zuko considered friends, and that this must have happened fairly recently … ah. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh, dear.</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Am I to assume that the friend in question has been wanting this particular blend of tea for some time?” Iroh asked delicately. “And perhaps only recently given in to temptation?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Yes! And … now that he’s tasted it, it’s the only thing he wants to drink. But he also cares about his friend, and his friend still doesn’t know.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Iroh sighed. “We all must take responsibility for our choices, nephew. I believe that before this man can decide on his future actions, he must come clean to his friend about what has already taken place. A true friendship can survive much, but to continue to deceive that friend rather than accepting the consequences of his actions would damage the trust between them even further.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko nodded. “That’s … kind of what I thought you would say.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Would it help to remind you that even a craving for a certain blend of tea can pass with time? Perhaps this hypothetical man would be wiser to find an experience not marred by guilt, instead of pining after a … tea that might never be his.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko nodded, rose, then turned to look back at Iroh. “You know exactly what I’m talking about, don’t you,” he said, his tone making it more a statement than a question. “You think I should tell him?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Aang is a very forgiving young man,” Iroh offered. “Katara is not so forgiving. It may be your friendship with her that suffers, in the end.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko’s shoulders drooped. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>*</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>Katara was not good at forgiveness. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>It was not, on the whole, a Water Tribe trait. Life in a small village on the edge of survival does not allow for trusting, against all the evidence of human nature, that “it won’t happen again.” In the Tribe, your actions define you. This is Siku, who does not pay his debts. This is Apata, who always catches extra fish to give to the elders. This is Tultuk, who can’t keep a secret. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>This is Katara, she thought, who shares the furs of another man while her lover is away. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Aang believed in second chances. But even now, a full day later, she could feel the passion she and Zuko had shared putting a glow on her skin and a restless heat in her blood. If Katara were truly deserving of a second chance, she would not have to fight so hard not to go to him and ask for more. She should be thinking of the unquestioning trust she would no longer see in Aang’s eyes, not the tormented desire that had still glittered in Zuko’s as he walked her back to the guest quarters last night with the scent of sex still on their skin.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She placed hardly any blame on him. She had flirted and teased, had acted as if she was no longer bound by her relationship with Aang during their time apart. And, well, he was a man. It was a woman’s job to set boundaries and a man’s job to respect those boundaries, and when Zuko had asked for permission, she had said yes. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>It had been far too easy to say yes to him. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>It would be so, so easy to do it again. To go to his rooms, or corner him in the hallway, and pull him to her by a handful of silk tunic and </span>
  <em>
    <span>demand. </span>
  </em>
  <span>She knew he would give her what she needed, his hot, demanding mouth and his hard body … </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>No. She had to get her desires under control. She’d been like this all day and enough was enough! Katara let herself fall back onto her bed and hiked up her dress. Then she unwrapped her sarashi and tossed the long cloth undergarment to the floor to more easily relieve the arousal that had been haunting her all day. She tried to empty her mind, to think of nothing but the sensation of her own touch, but like ice floating to the surface, thoughts of Zuko came up again and again. Finally, she gave in and let them, her body clenching around her fingers as she remembered golden eyes and sword-callused hands and the hot length of him moving deep inside her. Her skin flushed hot as she imagined him watching her now, the way his hands would clench and his lips part with wanting.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Katara.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Zuko,” she whispered back, then froze. Her body arched, close enough to fulfillment that her nerves protested the sudden stop. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Katara, can I come in?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He was outside. Her actual. Door. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Flustered, embarrassed, panicked, she leapt to her feet, kicked her discarded sarashi under the bed, and straightened her skirts, then sat down awkwardly in the chair beside her bed. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Um, come in.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko paused in the doorway, seeming to sense that something was off, but then came over to her chair and knelt in front of her, taking her hands in his. He took a deep breath and started talking, his words clearly rehearsed.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Hi, I want to apologize for behaving in a way that did not honor you, Aang, or our friendship. I respect you much more than my actions, uh, showed. I hope that it’s possible to re-restore the...” Zuko paused, his brow furrowing as he looked down at their entwined hands and then slowly ran his fingers over hers. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Her fingers, which were still slick from her own fluids. She had not expected him to grab her hand, all right? She had been startled and in a hurry. Zuko’s eyes traveled up and this time, she could see his eyes taking in her hardened nipples pressing against the front of her dress, the telltale flush staining her cheeks. His nostrils flared and she blushed more deeply, realizing that the scent of her arousal was probably still heavy in the air. Oh, Spirits, what could she say?</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>When his eyes finally reached hers, they were already dilating, and his breath was coming quicker. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Katara, are -- were you --” He swallowed hard, then, slowly, as if fighting the temptation, brought her hand, her incriminating fingers, to his mouth and touched his tongue to the pad of her finger. The brief, longing sound he made resonated in her very bones. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I, um, wasn’t expecting you to visit my rooms just now,” she said weakly, cheeks burning. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I came to apologize, to let you know -- my respect for you --” He swallowed again. “I can leave. We can -- we can talk about this later.” </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“We have to talk about it?” Katara cringed slightly.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Our friendship! Not -- not what you were doing!” Zuko hesitated. “If I’d opened the door without warning … what would I have seen?” he asked in a low, unsteady voice, licking her fingers again, as if he couldn’t help himself, and dragging his teeth over one fingertip. Katara gasped at the tender, startling sensation. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“We shouldn’t,” she said softly. His eyes closed for a moment, and he took a deep breath.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“We shouldn’t,” he agreed. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“If we did it again...” she whispered, knowing she shouldn’t be thinking about it. Zuko’s hands tightened on hers, his fingers stroking her skin. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I don’t want you to have regrets,” he said, tension and restraint visible in every line of his body.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “What about your regrets?” Katara asked, noticing what he wasn’t saying.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Zuko looked up at her. Late-afternoon sunlight from the window touched the smooth side of his face, leaving his scarred eye in shadow. “I would regret losing two of my closest friends. I would regret making you unhappy.” He swallowed. “But Agni, I would crawl over broken glass to have you again.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Heat curled low in her abdomen at his words, and she opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I can’t stop thinking about you.” Hope and intense arousal flared in his eyes at those words.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>He’s mine for the taking,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Katara realized, the thought equally startling and intoxicating.</span>
  <em>
    <span> All I have to do is ask for it. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Her body still throbbed with need and interrupted pleasure, and the temptation overwhelmed her. She reached for him.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He met her halfway, and they collided in a passionate kiss. He cradled her head in his hands and licked into the heat of her mouth. Katara buried her hands in his long hair, tugging slightly in her enthusiasm and dragging a moan from him. Strong hands pulled her from the chair and laid her down on her bed. The warm sunlight glinted on her lashes and glowed through her lowered eyelids. With exquisite care and shaking hands, Zuko pulled her dress from her body. As she opened her eyes fully to look up at him, what she saw on his face was pure worship. She felt no vulnerability as he skimmed his hands over the heavy curves of her breasts -- only power.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    He brushed a kiss over the chi point between her eyes, the tip of her nose, scattered them over her lips and cheeks and along the line of her jaw. He stopped to tenderly bite her lower lip before trailing his mouth down her throat. He caressed her upper arms -- Katara had grown up working hard, even before her training as a waterbender, and the heat of his fingers massaged tension from steely muscle, making her sigh softly. Meanwhile, his mouth became more daring, licking and nipping at her neck and the upper swells of her breasts. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    In sharp contrast to the slow, patient exploration of his mouth and hands, she could feel his erection pressing against her thigh, fully hard and throbbing for her. She wanted it inside her desperately. Yet she did not want this perfect, golden moment to end. Zuko closed his mouth over her nipple and sucked hard, and she arched up as pleasure shot through her. She whined and clung to him. When he lightly scraped with his teeth while tugging on the other nipple, she actually cried out, startled at the unusually intense sensations he was pulling from her. Her hips bucked helplessly, seeking his touch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    He did not stop, continuing the teasing until her breasts were tender from his assault and she was whimpering, just on the edge of an actual orgasm from it. Then, when she thought she might go mad just from his wicked mouth, he guided her hand between her legs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Make yourself come for me,” he whispered, and Katara, frantic with desire, rubbed her clit while he played roughly with her nipples. His eyes on her, molten gold and ravenous, and the echo of her earlier fantasy gave her climax a sharp edge of exhilaration that left her shaking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    She was still gasping through sweet, rippling aftershocks when Zuko tied his hair in a clumsy knot and then draped her thighs over his shoulders.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “What are you -- I can’t come again so soon,” she protested. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Yes, you can,” he told her, and then she could only bury her hands in his hair as he mercilessly flicked his tongue over still-sensitive nerve endings and sent her soaring towards a second orgasm before the first had even properly ended. Katara sobbed, cursing and begging incoherently. She arched hard against his mouth, trembling, giving herself over totally to the sensations he pulled from her with his wicked tongue. When she cried out his name, he moaned as if she had stroked him. The vibrations of it against her clit raked through her body and pulled her over the edge. He did not stop, driving the pleasure higher as it flared bright and then easing her down tenderly.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara was vaguely aware of Zuko moving up to lean on one elbow beside her and wiping his face with the corner of a sheet. Once she could think again, she reached over, pushed him down so he was lying on his back, and stripped him of his clothes in a couple efficient motions. She pulled his hair loose, spreading it on the pillow, and sat astride him. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He looked up at her, lustful and reverent. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Hers.</span>
  </em>
  <span> There was a flush of desire on his cheeks and an openness to his expression that was rare and beautiful. He reached up a hand and lightly touched her face, her lips.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“The sunlight on your skin,” he murmured, tracing the line between light and shadow on her throat. She leaned down and kissed him, slow and languorous, and he moaned and all but melted back into the pillows. She felt him shudder beneath her as she trailed her fingers over his ribs and the lean muscle of his abdomen. “Katara,” he breathed like a prayer. “Katara.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She raised her hips, wrapped her hand around the base of him, and lowered herself. A choked gasp escaped him. She smiled and began to move. His hands found her hips, clutching them desperately. The thick length of him inside her was </span>
  <em>
    <span>so good. </span>
  </em>
  <span>She made a rough sound of bliss as she found an angle that made each thrust deliciously deep inside her. This was everything she had forgotten that she needed. Her body </span>
  <em>
    <span>sang </span>
  </em>
  <span>with it</span>
  <em>
    <span>.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <span>Push and pull, give and take, harder and sweeter and </span>
  <em>
    <span>more</span>
  </em>
  <span>. It built like snowmelt cascading down a mountainside, and she both controlled the tides of it and let them carry her. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko’s heart was racing, his muscles taut with restraint, and she slowed for him, stroking his hair and his forehead. He groaned low in his chest, pressed his face into her soothing hands, and clutched her tighter. His fingers dug hard into flesh and muscle, hard enough to bruise. Katara felt a primitive joy at the thought. She wanted to wear the evidence of his passion and need like secret armor on her skin. She let his breath grow steadier, let him draw back from the edge of climax, and pressed gentle kisses to his lips. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Then, without warning, Zuko rolled them over and gazed down at her with such pure adoration that her heart stuttered in her chest. She opened her mouth, but no words came out, and he kissed her hard and deep. Then he moved, taking control of the rhythm -- just </span>
  <em>
    <span>taking her,</span>
  </em>
  <span> as she surged up to meet him. He hitched one of her legs up around his waist, hitting a deeper angle, and she moaned his name. Once again, he seemed to come undone at the sound, his rhythm faltering slightly as he made a broken, breathless sound of need. Then he snapped his hips hard, sending incandescent pleasure arcing through her, and she couldn’t resist. She said it again. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>That same gasping sound, and he drove into her harder. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh, yes. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Soon, she was chanting his name with each stroke, and he was taking her with his full strength, the force of his thrusts sliding them up the bed, sending a pillow tumbling to the floor, and pulling sweat-damp sheets loose from the mattress. It was wild and rough and </span>
  <em>
    <span>perfect</span>
  </em>
  <span>. The pressure built with blinding force, and Katara clawed at his back with the intensity of her orgasm, coming so hard that slick wetness flooded over his cock as she clenched around him. Zuko reached down, wonderingly, to where they were joined, then as she tightened even more around him, spilled himself into her with a wracked cry. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He clung to her for a long time then, and she held him, finger-combing tangles out of the silken mess of his hair and listening to the small, blissed-out sounds he responded to her touch with. The light through the window had become the rich rosy gold of approaching dusk, and it glinted on his sweat-damp muscles. Then he lifted his head from where his face had been buried in her neck, and he looked at her, his expression intensely possessive as he dragged his fingers through the wetness her release had left on their thighs and the sheets, following it to its source and stroking her lightly, tenderly. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara shivered. She didn’t think she’d ever felt so wrecked in her life. Her body throbbed and ached, the rippling aftershocks of pleasure still singing in her veins. Her thigh muscles were sore, her lips swollen from passionate kisses.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I don’t know what to say to you,” she admitted.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I know what I have to say,” Zuko said, his lips curling in the slightest hint of a bittersweet smile. “I don’t care about the consequences anymore.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Shattered</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
  <span>He was like an addiction. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Katara told herself that she should put a stop to it. He would still want her, but he’d respect her decision. She knew that. But every time they were in the same room, she could feel his eyes on her. When they were alone together, tension hung heavy in the air until one or both of them lost control. Then they were on each other, kissing and biting, hands tearing at clothing. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She didn’t know why she couldn’t get him out of her head. Was it infatuation? Had there been an attraction there beneath the surface all along? Was it the thrilling intensity with which he wanted her? Was it that up until now, she hadn’t allowed herself to explore her sexuality with any man but Aang? </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Or, worse, was she so ready to jump into this because she had literally spent her entire adult life in a relationship and she didn’t know how not to be in one?</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>To make it more complicated, she was still more than half in love with Aang. Realizing that she wasn’t happy had only been the first step to sorting through her complicated emotions. It was a mistake, doing this right now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    But oh, Spirits, it did not </span>
  <em>
    <span>feel </span>
  </em>
  <span>like a mistake. When his hands and mouth were on her and he was opening her up with his hard cock, it felt more right than anything she’d ever done in her life. She couldn’t get enough of his intense hunger for her, his possessiveness, the way his entire body responded to her touch. When she was in his arms, she forgot anything else existed. She was </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>    Which was why she was outside the door to his private office. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    He spent most evenings there, working late, or in the gardens by the turtleduck pond. When they hadn’t found some excuse to meet, she could usually find him in one of those two places. She knocked on the door softly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Come in.” He sounded tired. She entered to find him reading a scroll covered with dense writing and making a note on another piece of paper. His fingers had smears of ink on them. He looked grumpy and unfairly adorable in the reading spectacles he wore with a thicker lens on the left to compensate for his damaged vision on that side. He smiled slightly when he saw her. “Oh. Katara. Sorry I’ve been busy today.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She came over and perched on the edge of his desk. “Whatcha working on?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Fishing rights agreements. I think the Earth Kingdom is trying to get away with something here, but I can’t figure out what,” Zuko told her, putting down the scroll and rubbing his face tiredly, leaving a smudge of ink on his temple. Katara bent some water from the decorative fountain in the corner and gently used it to wash the ink away. Zuko looked slightly surprised, then held out his ink-stained hand hopefully. She smiled, pulled more water from the fountain, and sent it over his fingers, delicately pulling the ink from the pores and creases.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He startled her by moaning, staring at the living water on his fingers. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Zuko?” Katara quirked an eyebrow at him, slightly amused. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“It feels like the water’s sucking on my fingers!” he explained defensively, a slight flush showing on his fair skin. “It was … unexpected.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara tilted her head slightly, a faint smile spreading across her lips. “Does it? That has potential.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko’s mouth opened silently as she moved the water and used it to pull some ink from the sensitive skin between his fingers. He let himself slump back in his chair with a quiet sound. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Want to try an experiment?” Katara suggested.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He laughed quietly. “You really think I’m going to say no to that?” he asked.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I’m not going to use my bending on you without </span>
  <em>
    <span>asking</span>
  </em>
  <span> first,” she chided him. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Well, yes, then.” He brought his hands to his robes with a questioning look, and when she nodded, he pulled them off and laid them neatly on the desk, followed by his pants at another nod from her. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara licked her lips at the sight. Zuko was all lean muscle and exotic pale skin against the dark wood of the desk chair. The sharp angles of him fascinated her: his jawline, the deep shadow of his collarbone, the slight jut of the bottom of his ribcage, and the tantalizing V-cut of his hips. His scars -- the marks of survival, the marks of a warrior -- shone stark against the velvet smoothness of his skin. Her eyes lingered on his cock, already swelling and hardening for her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Anticipation drew a line of tension through his body, and his eyes shone with arousal and a faint edge of nervousness. Angular hands hardened by sword and flames lightly gripped the arms of the chair. Katara gathered clean water from the fountain and slid a tendril of it up to stroke the column of his throat, teasing the spot that made his hips jerk whenever she found it with her teeth. His breath staggered as she swirled water there. She felt a hot surge of arousal as he arched his neck to offer more of his throat to the water’s caress, trusting her implicitly to give him only pleasure. She shaped dual tendrils of water to trace the tendons from his jaw down to his collarbone, and then froze the tip of one, making him gasp as ice drew a line over flushed skin. The tendons of one hand flexed as his grip on the chair arm tightened. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    She played the ice over his collarbone to his shoulder, and back up his neck, drawing a shiver and a soft groan from him. She split the water more, trailing tendrils over his abs like teasing fingers, tugging at the trail of body hair leading down his lower stomach to his cock. Zuko bit down hard on his lip as she avoided his erection altogether, sliding the water around the base of it to either side to lift and caress his balls. He threw his head back with a muffled whimper, squeezing his eyes shut tightly, spreading his thighs wider as the water repeated the gentle sucking motions that had been so effective on his fingers. His hips jerked helplessly, knuckles white as he clung to the arms of the chair to anchor himself against the overwhelming sensation. Meanwhile, the ice continued to trace chilly patterns along his ribs and the sensitive undersides of his arms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Katara,” he gasped, his eyes opening wide and fixing on hers, pupils blown wide with pleasure. “Fuck. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Katara.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>    “How does it feel?” she demanded, splitting off tendrils of water to spiral teasingly up the length of his cock. He thrust against them helplessly, his mouth working silently for a long moment before he found his voice. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Can’t even describe it. Different. Really -- </span>
  <em>
    <span>really -- </span>
  </em>
  <span>good.” His jaw clenched, and his chest was heaving with each breath. She continued the sucking caresses of his balls and slid the spiraling tendrils up and down, not giving him enough pressure to truly satisfy, only to torment, for several long minutes, and he made the most beautiful sounds for her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    When she finally brought the greater part of the water to wrap around his cock, it was an arousing sight, flushed and throbbing hard, the loose skin around it pulled back by a watery grip to expose the sensitive head. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “And that? Is that good?” she asked, circulating the water in that same pulling motion that mimicked the feeling of sucking. The noise that escaped him sounded as if the breath had been punched out of him. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“So good.” His voice was wrecked, unsteady, breaking with each tug of the water. “Don’t ever stop. Don’t make me give this up.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She felt a sharp, sudden ache in her heart at those words. She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it would not go away. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Say you’re mine,” he urged her, his eyes burning into hers as he thrust helplessly, entirely at her mercy.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Zuko…”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Say you’re mine. Say it, fuck, Katara, please...”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Zuko, I can’t!” The words came out sharp and louder than she had intended. Zuko flinched, going still and guarded in a reflex that broke her heart a little. She stopped the motions of the water. “I’m sorry. I’m just not ready to say something like that yet! I don’t know what I really want or how I feel. I know I feel </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but …”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Get it off me,” he said quietly.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She blinked, confused. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“The water! Get it off!” he growled, and she realized what he meant and let it spill onto the chair and the ground. Zuko got up, grabbed his robe and pulled it around himself tightly. “Are you even planning on leaving Aang for good,” he demanded, turning back to look at her, “or is this just a way to entertain yourself while you and he are apart?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara’s stomach knotted up. “This happened so quickly, I never had the chance to figure out-”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I see.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She reached out to touch his arm, but he jerked it away from her, his face stormy, and stepped back into his pants.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I shouldn’t have let this happen. I should have known I couldn’t have something like this to keep. I threw away one of the only true friendships I’ve ever had to be with you!” His voice rose with emotion. “I’ve made myself terrifyingly vulnerable to you, and you haven’t even figured out if you</span>
  <em>
    <span> really want </span>
  </em>
  <span>me.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“That’s not--”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I’m not a toy,” he said harshly, cutting her off. The lamp flames flickered out as he left, leaving her standing alone in his dark office, drops of water clinging to her fingers. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>*</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko kept to his meeting rooms and private chambers in the following days, and avoided meals in the dining hall. He’d humiliated himself enough. She didn’t need to see the pent-up frustration in his movements or the shadows under his eyes. If nothing else, he could at least hold onto the last fucking shreds of his dignity by keeping some space between them. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Rationally, he knew that he’d fallen too hard, too fast, to expect Katara to return the same feelings right away. But he would have taken anything. He had been ready to give or endure whatever she asked, only for the reassurance that what was between them was real, that it meant something to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even that was too much to ask, it seemed. She was keeping her options open in case she decided she preferred to be with the Avatar after all. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko was very good at not being good enough. It was one of his specialties since birth. He could handle an honest rejection and keep going. He could live with knowing there were some things he would never deserve. That wasn’t cruelty. It was just how life worked. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>But having those things dangled before him or put into his hands like a gift, and then snatched away the moment he thought they might really be his to keep? That brought back echoes of Azula’s laughter and his father’s scorn and his stomach so knotted up that he could not eat or breathe, only wait for the inevitable next blow. That, he could not endure. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>So he stayed away. He left the gardens if he saw her approaching. He sat through tea with Iroh, who offered comforting proverbs that were meaningless to his ears. He spent most of three nights writing a letter to Aang, confessing what had happened, apologizing, and assuring him that Zuko had been merely a physical distraction to Katara and no more. He decided the letter was a terrible idea and burned it instead of sending it. Then he regretted burning it, but not enough to write it again. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She sent a few notes asking to speak with him. He kept them, because he was a pathetic fool, but he left them unanswered. He’d already given her his body and bared his soul to her. It hadn’t been enough. He didn’t want to hear her apologies and excuses for that. Let her take her time, make her decisions. He wouldn’t let himself hope that when her self-searching or whatever it was she needed was over, that he would be anywhere but left behind. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    When Katara left the palace a week later, it felt like she had taken the air in his lungs with her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>*</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>When Katara left, she wore the clothes she had received as a gift when she and Aang had stayed with the Northern Water Tribe and styled her hair differently. Her skin was too richly colored and her eyes too blue to pass as Earth Kingdom or Fire Nation to any but the most untraveled observer, but she did not want to be recognized right now. She did not want to be</span>
  <em>
    <span> herself</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    It was no surprise that her aimless wandering took her straight into the heart of the former colonies. Maybe it had even been on purpose. Zuko had told her a lot about the unrest there, and deep down, what she wanted right now was a fight. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    But even here, she found herself tangled in complex webs of old wounds and politics. criminal gangs were, in theory, the bad people, and the villagers they stole from the good people. But what about those who joined the gangs to survive because the economic upheaval of the war ending had cost them their businesses and they had no other way to feed their families? What about the Earth Kingdom villagers who had taken violent revenge on peaceful Fire Nation families because the danger of striking out at their real oppressors was too great? What about bands like the Freedom Fighters, who had been living like outlaws against Fire Nation rule for so long that they knew no other way of life?</span>
</p><p>
  <span> She was a grown woman. She understood subtlety and shades of gray. But right now, she wanted the childlike comfort of knowing that she was in the right in </span>
  <em>
    <span>some </span>
  </em>
  <span>way, </span>
  <em>
    <span>any </span>
  </em>
  <span>way. She had grown up with stark divisions. Tribe and outsiders. Sea and sky. Winters of unrelieved darkness and summers of midnight sun.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Honestly? She just wanted to hit someone and not have to feel bad about it afterward. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    She was helping an elderly woman fight raiders off from her small farm when a familiar knife pinned one of them to the side of the barn. Katara took advantage of his distraction to manacle him in ice, and in a few minutes she had ice-shackles restraining the remainder of the small gang as Mai and June watched in polite interest, ready to step in if needed but allowing her to finish what she had started. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“It’s been a while,” Mai remarked cooly as June started tying up and hauling the men and women of the gang onto the back of her shirshu with a strength that belied her small size. “Where’s Aang?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara just sighed. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Things with Aang are … complicated,” she said. She hesitated, then asked: “How did you know for sure that you didn’t want to stay with Zuko and try to work things out?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“No time for girl talk, either ride back with us and talk on the way, or save it,” June suggested as she finished searching the last gang member and tossed his knife into a bag of other confiscated weapons. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Why not?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Katara thought, and climbed onto the shirshu. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I didn’t leave Zuko because of him,” Mai explained. “It was everyone else. Marrying him and becoming the Fire Lady was </span>
  <em>
    <span>exactly</span>
  </em>
  <span> the sort of life I’d been raised for, around people with the same messed up priorities as my parents. Yeah, I could have stayed and fought and tried to change that, for him, and I was going to at first. But I don’t … do well, when I don’t have hard work or a physical challenge to set myself against. Zuko knows that. It’s like the world closes in on me and I lose the will to fight it. The only strong feeling I have left becomes boredom.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Like winter-sickness,” Katara reflected. “At the poles, it happens to some people after the sun’s been gone a while. They sort of lose their energy to do anything.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Zuko did what he could to help, just like I did what I could to help with his problems. We gave it a really good try. But the palace was draining the life from me. I had to leave.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Doesn’t it bother you, though, traveling around like this?” Katara asked her. “I think … I think part of the problem with me and Aang was that I kept trying to compensate for the fact that we didn’t have a </span>
  <em>
    <span>home</span>
  </em>
  <span>.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“The Avatar’s homeless?” one of their prisoner’s asked, then, “Ow!” when Mai kicked him. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“He’s an Air Nomad, nitwit. He travels the world on a sky bison doing Avatar things. And we weren’t talking to you.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Home </span>
  <em>
    <span>means</span>
  </em>
  <span> something to us in the Water Tribe,” Katara tried to explain. “A home is a woman’s power, her wealth. Even more so as a waterbender, because I could have built it from the ice myself. If a Water Tribe woman is angry enough with her husband, she can throw him out and make him go sleep on his boat. Not that I’m upset because I couldn’t kick Aang out, I just mean…”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Why not?” Mai asked. “Everyone has fights. Must be frustrating when all you can do is throw them off a bison and then they float right back up again.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara snorted. “It’s more about … feeling safe. Knowing you’re in control. So I started trying to control other things, and I ended up practically </span>
  <em>
    <span>mothering</span>
  </em>
  <span> him, and I never wanted it to be like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Ugh,” commented a female prisoner, then subsided at a warning glare from both Katara and Mai. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“So why are you beating yourself up over this? Explain to him that it wasn’t working out, wish him the best, and go find someone who isn’t an Air Nomad,” Mai suggested. “Heck, find Zuko, he’s always had a thing for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara choked on her own spit. “Um,” she said when she’d stopped coughing, “that’s kind of the other part of the problem.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She explained what had happened as circumspectly as possible, though June at least could read between the lines and was snickering by the time she was done, and one of the prisoners had earned another kick from Mai. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I just don’t know yet,” Katara finished. “I don’t know how to trust my own judgement anymore. I loved Aang -- I still love him in a lot of ways -- but I wasn’t happy with him. How do I know my feelings for Zuko are strong enough that I’d be happy with him?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Mai looked at her in mild disbelief. “Stop being such a kid about it, for one thing. Who ever told you that relationships work because of how strong your </span>
  <em>
    <span>feelings</span>
  </em>
  <span> are? It comes down to facts. Can you give him the things he needs? Can he give you the things you need? Are you willing to stick with each other during the times you’re not happy and make changes for each other?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“You didn’t stick with Zuko,” Katara retorted, feeling stung.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“We couldn’t give each other what we needed, in the end. He needed a Fire Lady who could handle Court without shutting down, and I needed a different kind of life than that. Just like you need a different life than Aang can give you, it sounds like. Figure out what you need.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I need a role to play independent from the man I’m with,” Katara said. “Something more my own than just helping him. I need a home that doesn’t fly and eat grass. I need … “ she paused. “Respect. Laughter. Passion.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Well, Zuko needs someone who has his back, no matter what,” Mai said frankly. “He needs someone who’s loving and affectionate, but will also tell him when he’s being an idiot. He needs someone who can handle court politics without blowing up or burning out. Are you ready to do all that? Think about it first,” she said, holding up a hand to stop Katara from answering too soon, “because if you go back there, start playing with his heart again, and then decide it’s not worth the trouble, I will find you and I </span>
  <em>
    <span>will</span>
  </em>
  <span> kick your ass.”</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Surrender</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Reconciliation and commitment, at last.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks again to randomgirlyoudon'tknow for beta reading and putting up with whining about how I couldn't make the ending work. I made it work! Thanks also to Yume and M for ideas for the final sex scene between them.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
  <span>Nearly a month later, on the morning when the first mists of autumn touched Caldera City, Aang arrived back at the capitol. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I assume Katara spoke to you about what happened,” Zuko said once they were alone.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Aang nodded. “You should know we’re not together anymore.” Aang’s voice sounded calm, but Zuko knew better. He could feel the tense sharpness to Aang’s energy, the energy of a master bender who was keeping deep, violent emotions under control so as not to endanger the people around him. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko swallowed hard. “It was … I didn’t mean anything to her. It just sort of happened. I’m sorry.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I think … I think if she hadn’t already known she didn’t want to come back to me, she wouldn’t have let it happen. We talked, and she ended things between us.” Aang looked away. “I still wanted to try to make things work. I always assumed we’d be together our whole lives.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“We all thought that too,” Zuko agreed. “That you two would get married, settle down together.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“That’s part of the problem, I think,” Aang said. “Katara says she needs someone who </span>
  <em>
    <span>can</span>
  </em>
  <span> settle down. The idea of just picking one place and living there forever feels … wrong. Even when I lived at the temple, we traveled all the time, to find fresh grazing for the sky bison and learn about the world and visit friends.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko supposed that made sense. His people had been called Air Nomads for a reason. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I’m sorry I betrayed your trust,” he said quietly. “If there’s some way that we can mend our friendship…”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“That’s why I came,” Aang said. “I’m still your friend, Zuko. I need to be angry with you for a while, but … Gyatso used to say that anger is healthy, because it’s the part of you that wants to protect your heart from being hurt while it’s healing.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko nodded slowly. “I understand,” he said. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I wanted you to know,” he said with a faded, ironic version of his usual smile, “I’ll still be here if you need me, just … don’t need me for a while, would you?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Aang stretched out a hand -- a Water Tribe gesture he’d picked up from Katara and Sokka. Zuko reached out his own and they grasped forearms firmly. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Thank you,” Zuko said, and deep inside, he felt some of the wounds that his own anger had been protecting heal a little bit.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>*</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>This is Katara, who shared the furs of another man while her lover was away. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>This is Katara, who gave her lover the strength and support he needed to save a world that needed saving, again and again.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>This is Katara, who left her tribe to learn waterbending from a Northerner.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>This is Katara, who helped her father and brother rebuild the South Pole after the war, raising a new stronghold of ice to keep them safe.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>This is Katara, whose betrayal and indecision broke the hearts of the Avatar and the Fire Lord. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>This is Katara, who healed those lightning-struck hearts years before and pulled them from the brink of death.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>This is Katara, who is not always a good person.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>This is Katara, who is allowed to make mistakes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>*</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko was lying beside the pond, feeding the turtleducks, when Katara approached. He swallowed, feeling the relaxation leave his body, and stood to leave.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Please, wait.” She was painfully lovely, standing there in plain travel clothes with the sun kindling chestnut highlights in her dark hair. He was hit by a fierce need to be anywhere but here. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I have to go. I’ll have the servants prepare a guest chamber and bring you something to eat,” he said quickly. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Zuko, I have something to say to you. Please, for the sake of the friendship we once had, will you hear me out?” </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>The friendship we once had,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thought, and managed not to wince at the sting of it. He squared his shoulders and jerked his head in a slight nod. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I didn’t handle things well when I was here. I know I hurt you with my selfishness. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and figuring out what it is that I want.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko nodded again, patiently waiting for the polite rejection he knew was coming, hating this. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“And what I want is you.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He went very still. “What?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara took a deep breath. “I don’t know for sure if I can be everything you need or you can be everything I need. But I want you, and I want to give it a try, if you’ll have me.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He swallowed. He felt like he was trembling on the inside, unsure whether to flee or go to her. Could he trust that she meant it this time?</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara stepped closer. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at him. “It wasn’t fair to you, letting you give so much more than I was ready to.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“No,” Zuko said hoarsely. “It wasn’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“And … I understand if you don’t want that anymore,” she said, looking down self-consciously. “My actions lately haven’t really endeared me to anyone.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“It’s not about what I want,” Zuko managed to say. “Sometimes I want things that aren’t good for me, and I’m afraid you could be one of those things.” Slowly, hesitantly, he reached out and cupped her cheek. She mirrored his gesture, and his eyes fluttered close as her thumb lightly caressed the edge of his scar. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He had never let anyone but her and Uncle touch it. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Her hands were cool and soothing.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“If I say yes, how much more will that decision hurt Aang?” Zuko asked her. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“He knows,” she said softly. “That I have feelings for you. I told him when we broke up.” She shrugged sadly. “I wouldn’t say we have his blessing. He said some things that … that I deserved to hear, to be honest. But by the time we parted, we agreed that when we had both had some time to heal, we would work on being friends again. We still want to be part of each other’s lives, and I think he still wants to be part of yours as well. There will be challenges, but … I don’t think our little group is broken for good. We changed the world together, and risked our lives for each other. And in the end, that’s bigger than who pairs up with who.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko remembered a handful of teenagers on the beach, arms around each other, ready to risk everything, and nodded. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“You were always our group’s heart,” he said softly. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“And you were our courage.” Katara’s other hand had come up to rest on his shoulder. He wanted to move away. He wanted to pull her close and never leave her arms again. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“I could use some courage myself right now,” Zuko admitted. “Doesn’t courage come from the heart?”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara shook her head. “Courage is like firebending,” she told him with a slight smile. “It comes from the breath.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko pressed his lips to hers and breathed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>*</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  
  <span>There had been other duties to attend to, and dinner to eat. Zuko had been surprised to find that food had taste again, and instead of eating mechanically as he had been in past weeks, he took second helpings, dragged vegetables through sauces, and savored each bite of the sweet fried sesame cake that was served for dessert. Every mouthful was spiced by the looks he and Katara exchanged across the table. Her smile made his heart pound. Could he really have this? Was it real this time?</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He let himself hope, just a little. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Somehow, he never had gotten around to arranging for a guest chamber for her, and she walked back to his rooms with him as if there was no question of needing one. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko closed the door softly behind them. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She had bathed away the dust of her travel when minor state matters had dragged him away from her earlier, and when she took off her clothes now, he could smell the scent of the soaps she had used rising from her skin. He pulled her into his arms, his hands relearning the irresistible curve of her waist and lower back. He pressed his lips to her shoulder and smelled jasmine and sandalwood, dragged her hair over his face and inhaled spice and roses. She wrapped her arms around his neck.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>Mine,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he thought tentatively, uncertainly. He did not say it aloud. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>She felt like everything he had ever wanted. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Together they undressed him, and Katara laid a kiss on each scar as it was bared to the light. When she pressed her mouth to the lightning burn on his chest that he had sustained while protecting her, she did not move away, but lingered there, tracing it with her tongue, caressing it with her teeth. Zuko shivered hard, fighting tears and the urge to crush her to him until she could barely breathe. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>His knees felt shaky, and he steered them to his bed. Watching her lie down on his white sheets, all bare curves and shining hair and dusky skin, he tried to pause and memorize the sight. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Katara. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>    Then he lowered his body over hers and they kissed, deep and frantic. Their hands tangled in each other’s hair, and he was caught up in waves of fierce need for her. He had to pull back for a moment, slowing his breathing, tracing the lines of her face, her neck, her lips. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Tell me what you need,” she whispered, blue eyes shining up at him. “Let me give it to you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>    Words,</span>
  </em>
  <span> Zuko thought helplessly. </span>
  <em>
    <span>I need words for that.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “Show me,” he finally said. “Show me you’re mine.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Katara’s fingers traced a line down to the twisted lightning scar on his chest again, her touch waking the sensation in his damaged nerves. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Yours,” she said softly. Their eyes met for a moment before he had to close his, overwhelmed by the emotion he could see in hers and still unsure he was ready to share everything that shone back from his own. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Katara trailed kisses down his stomach, making his breath catch and his skin tingle everywhere her mouth touched. She licked his hipbone, and followed the chiseled indentation in a direct line to his cock, making his mouth open in a silent cry. She took his hands in hers and cupped them around the back of her head, then lowered her mouth over the throbbing head of him, surrounding him in wet heat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Then she looked up at him expectantly, clearly waiting. It took him a moment, and then he realized-- she had given over control to him, and was waiting for </span>
  <em>
    <span>him</span>
  </em>
  <span> to move. Carefully, wonderingly, he pushed up into her mouth, only a little at first, testing. The difference … he’d always been conscious, as the receiving partner, of the need to hold still and let the woman take control. To enjoy only what he was offered and ask for no more. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Hesitantly, he pressed down on the back of her head, urging her to take more of him. She did, her cheeks hollowing as she sucked, and his hands tightened, stroking her hair and trying to communicate in touch what he didn’t have words for. He drew back and thrust into her mouth again, gaining confidence, the pleasure of it sharp-edged with the feeling of </span>
  <em>
    <span>selfish, disrespectful, I’m not supposed to just ...</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p>
  <span>    But Katara’s eyes were sparkling up at him in encouragement, and he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>allowed, </span>
  </em>
  <span>she </span>
  <em>
    <span>wanted </span>
  </em>
  <span>him to. He took a shaking breath and began to move, guiding her head in a steady rhythm, sheathing himself a little deeper with each stroke and carefully watching her reactions. It was a heady feeling. He kept his motions as smooth as he could, one hand caressingly framing her face, the other cradling the back of her head. Her eyes fluttered shut and there was no language beautiful enough to describe the movements of her neck and back as she yielded to his rhythm and took him in. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Fire kindles, flares, and burns.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Water </span>
  <em>
    <span>flows.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <span>Her mouth was so wet and soft that he found himself unable to resist the urge to press himself deeper. When the sensitive head of his cock brushed up against the back of her throat and she swallowed instinctively, he had to bite back a groan of pleasure. He could actually feel the walls of her throat closing around him, squeezing him. He pulled back, then repeated the motion, unable to resist feeling that again. This time he slid deeper and she choked. Her shoulders tensed slightly for a moment, then relaxed, and she adjusted the angle of her body slightly, stretching her neck forward, breathing in deeply when he retreated from her throat.  A twinge of guilt warred with how indescribably good it had felt to have her throat tense and constrict around him. Zuko pulled almost entirely out of her mouth, searched her face for signs of distress or indignation, found none … and allowed himself to do it again, pushing deep until the back of her tongue spasmed involuntarily and saliva leaked from her lips.  </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Is this--” he asked breathlessly, and she hummed her assent. Disarmed by her trust and surrender, he gave in to his instincts and fucked deep into her mouth, crying out as her throat clenched slightly then opened up to him. He kept his next two thrusts shallow to let her breathe, then thrust all the way in again, hands shaking in her hair. When she swallowed around him, her lips almost at the base of his cock, he felt like his spirit left his body for a moment. Zuko felt his heart clench at her utter yielding to him, giving him control of the rhythm, the depth, the very air allowed into her lungs. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He carefully alternated between shallow and deep thrusts, her vulnerability waking a fierce protectiveness in him. He gathered her hair away from her face with adoring care as he guided her, greedy for the sight of her face and of her lips wrapped around him. She slipped a hand between her legs and began to touch herself, and Zuko had to pull her mouth away entirely before he lost all control, breathing hard and fast, his fingers tracing the messy trails of saliva dripping over her chin. Then her other hand came up and wrapped around his spit-slick shaft and she was stroking him firmly and looking up into his eyes, and he could no longer hold it back, crying out and shooting thick ropes of seed onto her face and neck. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He was left heaving, speechless, and he stared wordlessly as she dragged a finger through it, not breaking eye contact, and sucked her finger clean. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Yours,” she said, her voice slightly scratchy from having just had him down her throat.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko made a broken sound, and slowly, reverently, slid his own fingers along the line of her jaw and into her mouth. She sucked on them. His cock spasmed as if trying to come again, skirting the line between pleasure and pain. She hummed contentedly around his fingers, lips reddened and swollen from wrapping around his cock and her hand still working between her legs.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Somewhere, Zuko found the strength to pull her up beside him and kiss her roughly, heedless of the mess. Then he pulled her hand away and replaced her touch with his own. She ground against his fingers with a sound of pleasure. Something in his chest swelled at how dripping wet she was for him, the way she urged him on with little moans and arches of her hips. He could feel her body tightening with her approaching climax, her voice scaling up, and suddenly he knew what he wanted to do to her. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He pulled his hand away, leaving her hips helplessly jerking, drawing her closer to him but pushing her hands away when she attempted to reach for her clit and finish. She tried to grind against him, but he bracketed her thighs with his own and pressed them together, forcing her to squirm and whimper, so close but not close enough. Zuko used his teeth delicately on her nipples, prolonging the state of almost-climax and drawing the sweetest sounds from her. Her head thrashed helplessly.</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Zuko,” she pleaded, but he was not ready to just give it to her yet. He held her, sucking and biting her nipples, until she subsided into frustrated whimpers. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Do you want my hands or my mouth?” he asked, letting her choose, and at her reply of, “your mouth,” he moved down her body, spread her thighs, and went to work. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>There were words that one rarely spoke aloud in the Fire Nation. Zuko had never heard his parents say them -- in fact, he hadn’t heard them said at all until he was ten years old and watching the final act of the play that told of the romance of Oma and Shu. Unlike in the Earth Kingdom or Water Tribes, love was a sacred thing, too intense to air in everyday conversation. It was a thing to hide in metaphors and glances. It was a thing to whisper to someone while they slept or trace silently over their skin.</span>
  
</p><p>
  <span>    And there was perhaps more than one reason that one of the euphemisms for pleasuring a woman with one’s mouth was ‘practicing calligraphy.’</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Zuko’s tongue moved over her clit, tracing the characters for words that his lips had never shaped. He told her silently once, then again, more quickly. She shuddered and cried out under him, and he stopped just short of taking her over the edge, pulled away, and plunged his fingers into her. She bucked her hips wildly at the sudden change in stimulation, both wanting him in her and needing more. He curled his fingers hard, making her arch for him, then shifted the angle before she could reach climax. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Zuko,” she whined. “Please, I need it. Please.”</span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>He shook his head and pulled his fingers out, shifting his focus back to her breasts and pinning her wrists back to the bed when she tried again to touch herself. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>“Not yet,” he told her, pressing them into the sheets. “Keep your hands here. Let me take care of you.” He let go without waiting for her answer and teased her hard nipples, rubbing his calluses over the sensitive tips and making her thrash and groan in frustrated need. He could feel his cock slowly beginning to grow hard again and pressed it against her thigh, a wordless promise. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <span>Katara’s hands were fisted in the sheets, and she tried to get around the limits he had set, wrapping a leg around his and trying to rub herself to climax against his thigh. He let her get close before pulling away, spreading her legs, and writing so lightly on sensitive flesh with his tongue that he had to hold her hips down. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Wait,</span>
  </em>
  <span> he wrote as she cursed and begged. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Soon. Mine. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    
  </em>
  <span>By the time he was fully hard, Katara’s whimpers and moans had turned into full-throated cries that she kept trying to muffle in the pillow. Zuko, wild with triumph and satisfaction, stole the pillow away. He didn’t care who heard. He pulled her onto her knees, knelt behind her, and pulled her back hard onto his cock, wrapping his arms tightly around her and holding her close. Katara made the most beautiful, gratifying whimper when he penetrated her, clenching tight around him. He reached down and rubbed her clit, aimed a thrust just right, and she came apart for him, her whole body bowing and shuddering with intense rippling spasms. Zuko pressed kisses to her neck and held her through it, grinding deep as she clenched around him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Finally, she melted bonelessly against him, deeply flushed and glowing. Fierce, aching tenderness for her rose up in his chest. He buried his face in her hair and just held her tightly for a moment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “I feel like I’m floating,” she whispered to him, and he chuckled. He kissed her throat and gently stroked her breasts. She sighed and gasped softly, her inner muscles fluttering around him when he tugged on a nipple. Slowly, he began to move again, rocking into her, bracing her with one hand on her hip and the other spread over her collarbone, arching her back against him, her pulse throbbing against the pad of his thumb. She was so hot and sweet and supple in his hands. She was </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He shut his eyes, pressed his mouth to her neck, and made love to her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    When the tension at the base of his spine had reached the point of no return, Zuko reached down and found her oversensitive clit. He stroked it tenderly, mercilessly, until she sobbed his name like a protest and came for him one last time, her clenching inner muscles milking his climax right out of him. He emptied himself into her, his forehead pressed to the nape of her neck and her name a silent prayer on his lips. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Katara.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>    Some minutes later, when he could remember how to breathe again, he gently lay her down on the bed and stood on unsteady legs to get the washbasin and a cloth. The pillows were on the floor and the sheets in an impossible tangle, the mattress itself at a slightly slanted angle on the frame. The blanket was in a heap at the foot of the bed on top of an overturned chair. The corner of Zuko’s mouth turned up in a slight smirk.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Katara gazed up at him when he returned, looking so radiantly satiated that his heart clenched with an emotion he didn’t have a name for. He focused his chi to bring heat into his hand and warmed the water in the basin, and began to gently run the wet cloth over her face and body. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Tell me this isn’t a dream,” he said softly. “I don’t want to wake up without you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Katara smiled, a soft expression in her eyes. “I don’t either. It feels very real though,” she said, flushing slightly. He brushed his lips over her cheek. She turned her head to catch his mouth with her own, kissing him with a slow intensity that made him melt.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “I’m staying,” she said when their mouths parted. “And I’ll tell you again and again until you believe it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    Zuko’s throat tightened and instead of responding in words, he slipped back into bed with her and held her tightly. She nestled against his chest like she was coming home. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>    No, not just </span>
  </em>
  <span>like, Zuko realized. </span>
  <em>
    <span>She is home. She’s staying. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>    He could feel Katara smiling against his skin, and then she giggled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “What is it?” he asked indulgently.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    “Nothing,” she said, stroking his back. “Just … happy.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>    He stroked her hair. “Me too.”</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Note: The concept of "I love you" being very rarely spoken is based on traditional Japanese culture. The actual word "aishiteru" is saved for particularly significant moments in a committed relationship; we use "I love you" in the way they would use phrases that translate to "I really like you." It's a lot like the Spanish "te amo" versus "te quiero."<br/>However, the idea of "practicing calligraphy" as a euphemism and a way to express feelings one isn't ready to say aloud comes solely from my own twisted mind and is not based on any culture whatsoever.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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